Facebook private message didn't create a Zendesk ticket

Question

A private conversation from a customer on my Facebook page didn't create a ticket. An individual reply from the customer or a Facebook page administrator didn't create a ticket. Why is that?

Answer

The are several reasons for a private message to not appear in Zendesk:

• Missing tickets
• Individual replies missing
• Wrong plan of your Zendesk account

Missing tickets

If the messages for certain conversations don't create tickets in Zendesk but others work as expected, it's likely that the user disabled access by third-party apps. 

To continue conversations with users who disabled access by third-party apps, have a Facebook page administrator reply to the user directly on Facebook. If the user changes their Facebook permissions in the future, messages after that point should pull in successfully. For more information, see this article: Why do tickets created via Facebook show the requester as 'Facebook User' instead of their name?

Individual replies missing

If individual replies are missing, the conversation was likely archived on Facebook. Encourage Facebook administrators to not archive conversations so quickly. The replies should pull over in a matter of minutes, but archiving a conversation immediately after a reply can cause the comments to not arrive in the ticket.

Wrong plan of your Zendesk account

Private messaging from Facebook is available for customers on the Zendesk Suite plan or on the Zendesk Support plan with the social messaging add-on. If your plan doesn't allow private messaging, your account shows this error message:

You need Social Messaging to set up Facebook Messenger. An account owner can purchase it for your subscription.

If you can't see the social messaging add-on in your account, go to Admin Center > Account > Billing > Subscription and purchase the social messaging add-on. After purchasing it, you can install and set up the add-on.

Additional resources

If the information in this article didn't help you solve your issue, see:

• I can't add my Facebook account to Zendesk
• My Facebook integration stopped working
• Why aren't new comments from Facebook posts or ads being added to tickets?
• How do I troubleshoot issues with my Facebook channel?

Note: Zendesk is removing the legacy Social Messaging App on January 31, 2023. See the article on the removal of the social messaging app to determine if this change affects your account.